World's Best Tours

50 of the World's Best Guided Expeditions

"Don't tell me how educated you are; tell me how much you have traveled.” Every wayfarer instinctively understands
this maxim. But can it still be true in an era of Wikipedia and 360-degree Google Street View panoramas, when countless facts about the world (and innumerable photos of it) are available 24/7 from our laptops and smartphones? Ah, but travel, when done deeply and thoughtfully, doesn’t just mete out the data. It opens us to truth and wonder. Immersion in another culture rewires our brains and makes room for information to organize itself into intelligence. For our ninth annual list of guided trips, we mined the ever expanding field to find 50 of the world’s best, plus an additional 10 of our favorite National Geographic trips. Whether it’s researching Scottish heritage, learning how to make cheese in Vermont, or getting up on a surfboard for the first time in Mexico, travel leaves us refreshed, smarter, and most important, wiser.—The Editors